Some choice quotes by Joshua here include my musings on why people want to have frogs in their living rooms. Having kept some Xenopus wittei infront of my desk during my PhD days, I do understand why it's fun to have pet clawed frogs. But many of the animals sold spend most of their times burried in the bottom of the tank, and are hardly ever seen.
And some more media coverage here:
This one written by one of our Bot-Zoo alumni features a picture of me being busy in the office. Don't miss it!
Alex Reblo spent a very long time chasing frogs up and down a race-track up and down the country. In the end, he managed to get performance and morphometric data on 25 species and 215 individuals of pyxicephalid frogs. That's remarkable. Then he analysed all of his results in a phylogenetic framework (of his own making). Lastly, after finishing his thesis (for which he received a cum laude), Alex turned this chapter into a brilliant paper, published today.
The Pyxicephalidae is the most speciose family of frogs in southern Africa, making up more than half of all the species in South Africa. They are surprisingly diverse, inhabiting all of the country's biomes, from deserts to forests and swamps. They go from the smallest of our frogs (the aptly named micro frog) to the largest (the African bullfrog). They have also adapted into many forms, burrowing, swimming, tree living, not to mention a host of different reproductive traits. They really are a remarkable family.
Alex has his own YouTube channel where he's published some of the amazing things that he saw doing his MSc. In the clip below, you'll see the Klipheuwel Dainty Frog (Cacosternum aggestum) calling...
Alex specifically wanted to know whether there was evidence that these frogs had adapted to their environment. I won't spoil it for you, but encourage you to read his excellent paper:
Rebelo, A. & Measey, J. (in press) Locomotor performance constrained by morphology and habitat in a diverse clade of African frogs (Anura: Pyxicephalidae). Biological Journal of the Linnean Societyhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1093/biolinnean/blz007pdf
We know that the trade in amphibians increases year on year, but what is driving the demand? This might be a no-brainer for many of you reading this blog. Why wouldn't anyone want to have a pet amphibian? In a first attempt to dig into this intriguing question, we reasoned that people who upload their videos to YouTube might be sharing what they consider to be the most important qualities of their pets. After all, why else would you upload a video of your pet amphibian?
We were about to find out!
So the truth is that people upload videos of their amphibians for all sorts of reasons. That was our conclusion after watching more than 1000 videos. Who would have thought that 'unboxing' would be such a popular category? We found videos of people driving toads in lego cars, tying them to helium baloons and watching them float away, as well as preparing a Chinese giant salamander for the pot. But we also saw plenty of much loved amphibians in people's homes, and we were able to look at the behaviour that was being filmed to give us some insights to answer our question
To read more about what we found, why not read our paper? It's free to read online.
Measey, J., Basson, A., Rebelo, A., Nunes, A., Vimercati, G., Louw, M., & Mohanty, N.P. (2019) Why have a pet amphibian? Insights from YouTube. Frontiers in Ecology And Evolution 7: 52 doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00052
We kicked off late in 2019 on the last day of February, and very appropriately for Leap Frog Day we had two froggy talks from the MeaseyLab:
Natasha started off the talks with her (much practiced) talk on:
"The effects of range expansion on the survival and development of invasive Xenopus laevis tadpoles." Natasha Kruger (Stellenbosch University)
Then Carla told us about some of the work that she did for her thesis on toads in Brazil in the Caatinga, as well as some work she's currently doing on tegu lizards.
"Relationship between seasonality, stress and immunity in anurans and lizards" Dr Carla Madelaire (Physiology Department, Univ. of São Paulo)
Both talks were well received.
It was a splendid venue at the Manor House next to the CapeNature Scientific Services centre in Jonkershoek. We got a rather special misty rain the came down as we all settled down to talks under the yellow-wood beams and the thatched roof.
Today our amazing global meta-analysis on the impacts of alien species on amphibians was published. This MeaseyLab project was the brainchild of Ana Nunes. Way back in July 2015, Ana spotted that while there had been some great reviews of impacts of invasive species on amphibians, so far there hadn't been a meta-analysis. She introduced the idea to the lab, and then kept us busy for many months reading and scoring papers on impacts. It has now paid off with our paper being published today in Proceedings of the Royal Scociety B. It's been a long haul, but it was certainly worth it.
So what did we find?
What we found was quite surprising. While most people focus on the negative impacts of fish being most deleterious to amphibians, we found that the biggest effect was in fact from invertebrates. Moreover, most of the studies of invertebrates on amphibians featured the impacts of crayfish on tadpoles. Ana did her PhD in exactly this area, and so we got some great insight into exactly what the mechanisms involved were.
Other important findings involved the holes in our knowledge of impacts of alien species on amphibians. Very few studies have been conducted on adults, especially the impacts of invasive plants. These insights really help when planning future work.
Ana left us in June 2017, and now works for the IUCN in Cambridge. But if you want a really good look at the lab group that took part in this work, look no further than the infamous MeaseyLab Mannequin Challenge.
Nunes, A.L., Fill, J.M., Davies, S.J., Louw, M., Rebelo, A.D., Thorp, C.J., Vimercati, G. & Measey, J. (2019) A global meta-analysis of the ecological impacts of alien species on native amphibians. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 20182528. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2528
